Senior: 'I want to have a direct impact on the CU campus while I'm here'

In 1998, Shannon Overs, of Niwot, began as a freshman at CU. She had completed high school in 1 1/2 years.

In 2003, Alexander Oshmyansky graduated from CU after just a year on the campus and just months after his 18th birthday. He had amassed more than 100 college credits while in high school.

In 2009, 17-year-old engineering student Eric Eason won a $250,000 graduate school fellowship. He graduated from CU just a few days after his 18th birthday.

In 2009, 18-year-old Ryan Kramer graduated from CU. He started at age 14.

In 2012, chemical and biological engineering student Brandon Lin graduated after starting at CU at age 14.

When she was 18 months old, Natasha Goss was asking her mom what was in water that makes it wet.

By age 2, she was reading. By third grade, she was whizzing through pre-algebra courses.

Goss, a 16-year-old majoring in chemistry and minoring in math, will graduate summa cum laude May 10 from the University of Colorado.

When most kids her age are getting their driver's licenses, she's prepping for her next academic chapter -- a Ph.D. program in atmospheric chemistry at Harvard University on a three-year National Science Foundation fellowship.

Goss began attending classes on the CU campus at age 13, after completing four years of high school at Silver Creek in Longmont. She attended a Montessori school when she was younger and was home-schooled, as well.

At age 13, the first class of her college career was organic chemistry, a notoriously rigorous course.

"I was a little bit nervous because it was my first day," Goss recalled. "But I read the first couple chapters of the textbook, felt pretty prepared and went to organic chemistry and a few other classes and came away feeling that college was going to be really fun. And the past four years have pretty much confirmed that. I've had a better time each and every year. I've learned so much -- not just in my classes, but from my colleagues and my research and my classmates."

For her first three years at CU, Goss commuted by bus from Longmont. This year, she lived in the dorms.

During an interview, Goss talked about volunteering with the Environmental Center, including serving on the Environmental Board, which awards grants for sustainable campus projects.

"I want to have a direct impact on the CU campus while I'm here," she said.

Goss said her volunteer work dovetails with her professional goals, as she wants to do scientific research on climate change, atmospheric chemistry and human impacts on the air and biosphere.

Environmental Center Director Dave Newport remembered when Goss walked into his office in the summer of 2009 and said, "So, I have been looking at everything the Environmental Center does and I think I can help you a lot. And the good news is you don't have to pay me because I'm only 13."

While at CU, Goss has also been a Norlin Scholar, a Marjorie Skiff Rose Scholar and a Barry M. Goldwater Scholar. She won an Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program grant while working as an intern in a water chemistry lab.

Michael Grant, associate vice chancellor for undergraduate education, led a study abroad trip to Australia in the summer of 2011, and Goss was among the students participating.

Grant said he was impressed with her "deep commitment to the world of ideas and her willingness to commit the time and energy required to explore and understand those ideas in authentic depth."

"I anticipate she will be an enthusiastic, highly productive scientist and citizen for many years to come," he said.

Goss supplemented her honors research into trace gases in the atmosphere and isotopic substitution with a year-and-a-half of work with another campus research group at the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research. That research involved dust deposition from the atmosphere in the Rocky Mountains.

In her free time, Goss said, she enjoys running and reading, and she's teaching herself to knit.

Sixteen-year-old Natasha Goss takes notes during professor Paul Hammer's "Introduction to British History to 1660" class at the University of Colorado on Tuesday, April 30, 2013. Goss will turn 17 two weeks after graduation and start her Ph.D. at Harvard in the fall. (Mark Leffingwell / Daily Camera)

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